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One of the few times I've ever consciously succumbed to advertising was when Microsoft emerged from the dark ages and started to make computers act a bit more like my Mac. I really wanted a slice of the action and so I tried to run Windows on the Mac using a PC emulator. Several hours later I dropped the idea, aghast at the leaden progress of the loading process, but, considerably angered by the poor value of Macs compared with PCs, I made the great transition. Which is where I am now, typing on a PC laptop. I still think Macs are poor value in many ways, though they've improved a lot, and they do have some nice things going on in their operating system. After all this time I would expect Windows to be better than it is. After all, most of the world uses it; it's an immense operation; it's worth billions; and yet Windoze and Microsoft’s applications are really not much better, on the surface, than a Big Mac. They really do lack flair. One example struck me lately -- and I'm no computer nerd. When I want to search for a word in Internet Explorer I have to bring up a separate window, hunt for the word, and then close the window. Two windows. Boring! In Firefox the search window is part of the main window, and it starts searching as soon as you type; there’s no window to close. Exhilarating.

Then there are the little things. I bought an ancient Vaio recently to use in libraries. It’s light and portable, and it’s fine for a bit of Internet and typing. Sometimes I connect a USB device and every single time I get a little box that opens at the bottom of the screen saying something like, ‘I notice that this is a 1.1 USB port. Would you like me to look for a 2.0 port, which would be so much faster and altogether a better computing experience for you. Have a nice day.’ So I click on the box and the computer splutters and wheezes for a short while and it comes back with the message, ‘I’m so sorry. There simply isn’t a faster port on this computer. So you’re stuck with a really crappy transfer speed until you get rid of this rotting heap. Have a nice day.’ And I don’t see these messages again until next time I plug in a USB device. Well really, you think it would learn, don’t you.

And then there’s the trash. Every time I go to empty the bin I get an irritating message that asks me if I’m absolutely, 100% certain that I really want to empty the trash. Imagine what this would be like in real life. You go downstairs with your black bags and Bill Gates is standing beside the bins asking you if you’ve really thought the matter through. Are you sure? You’d strangle him. Whether you check or uncheck the box that’s supposed to switch this warning option on or off, you still get the box. Most annoying.

And why does Word keep reverting to US spelling? I’m not going to write ‘color’, not now, not ever. Is this a little piece of cultural imperialism? Why doesn’t the spelling occasionally skip from UK to French or Croatian? It would be a nice change. Ideally though, the Word document would stay with the default setting you think you’ve chosen in the first place. After all, it makes enough of a fuss at the time you make this life-changing decision.

I really do think it’s time somebody else designed our operating system and software. Too much of one company is never a good thing.

university libraries in Ireland and US, part 2

It's been suggested that I wasn't totally fair to Ireland and Britain when I compared private US institutions with the publically funded ones in the British Isles. So I did a quick check to see if the state-funded University of Washington in Seattle and University of California, Berkeley were as impressive as Princeton and others when I did an author search for the great Viennese theorist, philosopher, editor, analyst and much more, Heinrich Schenker. Here are the results:

Washington: 29 hits

Berkeley: 50 hits

(compared to the previous highest of 46 hits, Cambridge, England, and lowest of 2, University College Cork; the averages from four libraries in each area were Ireland 9.5, UK 36.5, US 45.25)

I rest my case. Ireland appears to have very little interest in proper provision for third-level education and scholarship, as is shown in the pitifully stocked university (and other) libraries. Britain does pretty well, in spite of awful funding in some areas. America is in a different league. If you are in one of the great population centres in the US, you may be pretty sure that most books in your subject area are available locally or via inter-library arrangements.

Bush: plunderer and rapist of America

I quote: 'In a stunning, relatively overlooked area of the southern Sierras, just east of California Hot Springs and the south valley town of Porterville, the Forest Service is facilitating one of the most rotten deals in the recent, rotten history of logging on public lands. And these are not just any public lands but a National Monument established in 2000 to protect giant Sequoias, in large part by prohibiting timber cutting and restoring the lands to their primeval condition.'

And: 'The Forest Service's proposal calls for 180 clearcuts of up to two acres in size, in the belief that sequoias benefit from sunny openings in the forest. But studies by the University of California on a state forest have found far, far fewer seedlings on logged sequoia stands than in areas subject to normal wildfires.'

This forest houses two thirds of the world's oldest trees. The trees require heat from fires to release seeds, so the reasoning behind the Bush administration's proposal is flawed, but then science has not been a great influence on this Texan grandee and his jesters, as the global-warming and evolution debates have shown.

Is there going to be a single, decent bequest from this appalling administration? Will people look back on this period and be able to think of one fine achievement that had future generations in mind? The war on terror? Hardly. It's worse now than it was in 2001: Bush has done little on the home front. Fewer wars? Iraq, Lebanon ... A safer, more beautiful environment? Probably not. Bush has only ever contributed to one cause: the ever-increasing prosperity of a tiny number of the wealthiest people and corporations the world has ever known. And yet still some of the poorest people in America believe that he is a moral, God-fearing man. What more do Bush and his administration, who for me are the epitome of greed and self-interest, have to do?

paranoia, bigotry, and stupidity in the air

flyMonarch.com, the site for Monarch Airlines, encourages you to buy their product with the byline 'expect more, pay less'. Well, two arab gentlemen certainly got more than they expected, because they were turfed off the aircraft by Monarch. Apparently some passengers saw the two men behaving 'suspiciously' (i.e. speaking in what they thought was Arabic), acted up, and forced the captain of the flight to have them removed. The plane was then cleared and searched for explosives. But of course, who is better qualified to judge these matters than Joe Public. What an invaluable repository of knowledge the common man is. Just wave a terrorist under his nose and all the x-rays, body searches, passport monitoring, liquid exclusion, etc. of the security staff is revealed as the hollow sham we've always believed it to be. In the future let's invite the non-arab, English speaking, white-skinned public to do the screening and leave all that technical stuff at home.

Oh, and one other thing, let's not pay less and expect more. Given this example of Monarch's judgement, do we really want to fly with these people? (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/5269106.stm)

Americans friendly?

I went into Acme this morning, one of the most common supermarkets around these parts (PA), and I couldn't find a basket. I went up to a guy with the right badge and asked for one. He accompanied me into the lobby and found one, explaining on the way why they were so short. Apparently they keep getting stolen because people use them to shoplift. Pretty brazen. By the time I took my basket and had been told I was 'very welcome' (after thanking him), I felt pretty uplifted, I have to say. Later I went into Brew Ha Ha! in Trolley Square, Wilmington, a favourite haunt, to get coffee. The woman serving was mortified when she misremembered my usual order, the cup for which she had produced the instant I stepped into the cafe. Once again my spirits, which had been waning at the thought of term, supplemental exams, national wage agreements, the Middle East, GWB, Blair, Ahern, credit-card balances, hoovering, and goodness knows what else, started to rise. Yesterday a girl cheerfully put up with my endless indecision at a superb ice cream and custard store in New Jersey, helpfully enumerating her own favourites and accurately describing the contents of each of their infinitely wonderful and varied creations.

What more can I say? You will find this sort of response from time to time in Ireland, but you absolutely cannot count on it, and it often seems pretty grudging. Many other times the body language (and sometimes the spoken language!) in Ireland is telling you to go f**k yourself as you have the confounded cheek to ask for some service that in America is provided with a smile which, more often than not, seems perfectly sincere. And don’t even get me started on what you get when you enter these places where service is so cheerily provided. The ice cream, the selection, the value, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. God Bless America indeed!

blogging those damn spammers

Spammers are vermin, as we all know. Sadly and very annoyingly they've started using the anonymous-comment facility on this and other blogs to spread their fetid presence yet more widely. Since I already encounter more than enough SPAM, I've switched off anonymous comments, so I hope people will be willing to go through the registered route to correct my mistakes and challenge my views (or perhaps even agree with me). If you want to write to me by email, please do so: my address is simon.trezise@gmail.com.

university libraries rated

One of many reasons why I’m not jumping up and down in ecstasy at the prospect of my imminent return to Ireland is the quality and quantity of university libraries in the US. This is partly a matter of funding: whereas some of the American universities I’ve looked at have pots of money, Ireland has almost third-world funding levels for its universities, which have left them strapped for such luxuries as books. Even so, I rarely get the impression that university administrations in Ireland, let alone the government (Irish universities depend on public funding), fully appreciate the importance of properly stocked research libraries (one university in Philadelphia has an annual purchasing fund for music around 360 times greater than the sum made available for music at Trinity College Dublin, though Trinity’s resources are boosted by the automatic deposit of all books published in the British Isles). In America the message has got through loud and clear: libraries are vital. It really shows.

In order to explore the point I investigated various library holdings of one seminal author, Heinrich Schenker, who is generally regarded as one of the most important writers on music of the 20^th century (on theory, analysis, performance, editing, and philosophy of music). The results were, to say the least, revealing. In the light of experience I think these results are representative. The number of relevant hits an author search yielded are shown below, with multiple holdings not included.

[British Library: 37

Library of Congress: 36]

Four Irish universities, within about 0 to 3 hours commute of Dublin:

Queen’s University Belfast: 8

Trinity College Dublin: 21

University College Cork: 2

University College Dublin: 7

Four US universities, within 0 to 2 hours commute of Philadelphia:

Princeton University: 42

Rutgers University: 32

Temple University: 30

University of Pennsylvania: 38

Four English universities, within 1/2 to 2 hours commute of central London:

Cambridge University (Newton Catalogue): 46

Royal Holloway College (London University): 17

Southampton University: 22

Sussex University: 31

England comes out of this pretty well, and if one is working in London there are many more alternatives to the libraries randomly picked out above, not least the British Library itself. Consider too that London colleges have a very fine central library, Senate House, in addition to their own holdings. Philadelphia is superb, as not only are there institutions in the city with magnificent holdings (including the main public library), there are several more within easy commuting distance, such as the Library of Congress, New York Public Library, etc. Moreover, Inter-Library Loan is free in many of these places, and you can also use a pooling system in which several institutions, including Yale and Princeton, share books and journals (it’s called Borrow Direct). Ireland is diabolical. With no library anywhere near the best England and America have to offer, the hapless researcher has either to use Inter-Library Loan, which is expensive, or travel abroad, which is also expensive (Berlin, London, and Paris are the obvious destinations). Neither solution is satisfactory, even if there were adequate funding to make them a genuine alternative to a functional library. Electronic resources are irrelevant for the brief survey I undertook, but as it transpires, Irish universities have not implemented the full range of electronic resources that are routinely available in American libraries.

flying for your life

British intelligence has foiled an attempt to blow up planes bound to the US from London, it seems. The terrorists were apparently intending to bring their explosives on in hand luggage. (I have seen no information about how advanced these plans were.) The fallout for passengers is disturbing. They are being refused permission to bring liquids onto flights in hand luggage, including, I assume, water. There are serious health implications, as plentiful water is essential when one's flying long distance, as doctors repeatedly tell us. It's now up to the airlines to supply the large quantities passengers require to avoid dehydration, and not to charge for it. If they don't, the health risks of flying will multiply exponentially.

Orthodox Jews Demand End to Zionist Atrocities in the Middle East

One of the most reassuring and moving websites I've encountered since Israel's depravity was revealed in its most naked and brutal form in the horrific bombing of Lebanon and Palestine is this protest site from Orthodox Jews, whose voice has long been stifled in Israel. Their obvious compassion and humanity are a welcome relief from the violent rhetoric emanating from much of America and Israel. I sincerely hope that their initiative will get through to somebody. At the very least it tells us that Israel's bloodlust does not represent the aspirations of all of the Jewish people. If their protests are heard, it will surely stem the waves of anti-Semiticism that Israel seems determined to encourage at the moment. This is just a brief quote from http://www.nkusa.org/ (the picture is from their site too -- I hope they don't mind my using it).

'The brutal and indiscriminate attack upon the people and infrastructure of Lebanon by the Zionist State "Israel" is a crime against all basic standards of decency and humanity.

The excuse given for this murderous invasion was the attack by Hezbollah on the IDF. What this might have to do with the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese innocent men, women and children, who are subjected to an ongoing living hell, is beyond comprehension.'

caravans on the Blue Ridge Parkway

We arrived at a lovely overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina and found the second picnic table unoccupied. A middle-aged couple was unloading copious supplies onto the other and looked delighted with the glorious view and feast in prospect. As we sat down to enjoy our much more modest feast, the caravan (Michigan number plate B30***6) pictured above pulled into the exact centre of the overlook and parked. The driver jumped out and had a quick cigarette whilst his wife (or partner, sister, transvestite significant other) scurried into the caravan, barely pausing to glance at the view. One cancer stick later the driver joined her and they proceeded to eat lunch in the cloistered environment of the caravan. Having blocked our view, they didn't even have the grace to engage with their environment. There's a word for people like this: tossers. Oblivious to the world around them, they devote themselves to their own comfort and to hell with the rest of humanity. Tossers indeed.

environmental consequences of Israel's aggression

I have been shocked to discover the environmental impact of Isreal's aggression in Lebanon. This is typical of numerous reports I have encountered of the oil spill caused Isreal's attack on a power plant in Lebanon:

' "Up until now 10,000-15,000 tonnes of heavy fuel have spilled out into the sea," after Israel's bombing of the power station in Jiyeh two weeks ago, Lebanese Environment Minister Yacub Sarraf told AFP Saturday.

"It's without doubt the biggest environmental catastrophe that the Mediterranean has known and it risks having terrible consequences not only for our country but for all the countries of the eastern Mediterranean."

Israeli forces bombed the tanks at the power station on July 14 and July 15, just days into their offensive on Lebanon which has seen blistering air strikes across the country and a bloody ground incursion in the south.' www.breitbart.com

Increasingly as we review the impact on people, infrastructure, culture, and environment of Isreal's gross overreaction to the kidnapping of two soldiers (as opposed to the hundreds or indeed thousands of Palestinians 'abducted' by Israel, including elected politicians), it becomes clear that Israel has catastrophically blundered. It is fighting a war that it cannot hope to win, terrorism being what it is. The real casualty is humanity itself, not just in Lebanon and Palestine, but in Israel itself, because the torturer corrupts his own soul, not his victims'.

China and dogs

It's often said that we can judge a nation's quality and development by its treatment of animals and approach to animal welfare. In response to an outbreak of rabies in a Chinese province, 50,000 dogs were culled. The people charged with this cruelty went out at night, caused a commotion that started the dogs barking, and then dragged the dogs out from under their owners' horrified gaze and beat them to death. China is a terrible country in many ways. It is the opposite of so much that Americans and Europeans are supposed to value. Its treatment of Tibet is one of the most distressing stories of the post-war years. This episode with the dogs gives us horribly graphic evidence of the monstrous nature of the regime that will doubtless supplant America as the world's superpower in years to come.

Mel Gibson

I have mixed feelings about Gibson's outrageous behaviour. The first reaction I had to the news was disgust that he should have been driving a car with so much alcohol in his system. That way manslaughter lies, and surely anyone who drinks himself into this state, gets out and drives, and kills somebody deserves to spend a very long time behind bars. Sadly, Americans don’t seem to get as worked up about drinking and driving as we do in Ireland and Britain, more’s the pity. As to what he said to the policeman, if he said all that’s reported, it’s very offensive. Of course. But would the media reaction have been quite so outspoken if he’d cursed Arabs, blaming them for the world’s troubles? Because of the Holocaust there is greater sensitivity to anti-Semitism, which is easy to understand, but surely all racism is objectionable.

What Gibson said is awful, but was it the ‘drink talking’? An ugly darkside is drawn out by alcohol that is not necessarily a viable reflection of the person whom we encounter in society. Lurking behind many happy, smiling faces are fears, irrational hatreds, and so on. History tells us that for some unaccountable reason a lot of this gets dumped onto groups of people that white, non-Jewish people like Gibson irrationally mistrust or fear. Presumably his outburst was also fuelled by anger at Israel’s brutality in the Middle East, but confusing anger at the behaviour of a superpower, a political state, with the actions of Jews as an ethnic or religious group is, to my mind, profoundly wrong.

I don’t want this episode to derail Gibson’s career, because I think he’s got a lot to offer. He’s a fine actor and a good director. As to it forcing a re-evaluation of his film The Passion of Christ, I really think this is nonsensical. The film has to be assessed in its own right, without reference to any episode in a man’s life. Gibson is right to go for treatment, however, and his decision to talk to members of the Jewish community seems excellent, assuming it's sincere.